“Do not talk to grown-ups you don’t know. Don’t follow ’em, don’t hide with ’em, and don’t take ice cream or anything else from ’em. Understand me?”
“I will if I want!” Abigail shouts back.
I swear to baby Jesus in the manger…
“Not if you’re smart you won’t. Smart folks know better than that. I thought you’s intelligent, Abigail. Guess I was wrong.”
Abigail sticks her tongue out at me, but when she goes back to licking her ice cream, I can see she’s actually considering what I said.
There’s a knock at the door. My heart stops, and so does my breathing. I jump to my feet and shuffle the girls into the kitchen.
“Why’s there water and flowers on the floor?” Abigail whines.
“Be quiet.” I hide them in the broom closet.
I throw open every kitchen drawer searching for the biggest knife I can find, but before I can grab one, something zips past my face, and then I hear a loud thump. I run into the living room, and, between the door and the window, I see a seven- or eight-inch serrated knife sticking outta the wall.
A memory overtakes me. I’m eleven, and I’m out in the woods with my grandmother. She hands me an arrow, and I shoot it straight into a tree trunk. Without a bow. Or my hands.
“Do you know how that happened?” she asks me. I’m looking up at her, and she’s leaning down toward me. I feel nervous, like I done somethin’ wrong.
Before I can answer, somebody grabs me from behind. Mama. She yells at Grammie Atti and tells her not to show me how to do anything else. She wants me to grow up right. Not like a heathen. Even now, I can hear my grandmother laughing at us in the background as Mama dragged me away.
My current sixteen-year-old self yanks the knife from the wall and studies it. I did that. I made it happen without meaning to, or even knowing I was doing it. This is me. Has this always been me?
If one of the girls had been in the path a that knife…
Another knock at the door, louder this time. I peek through the curtain. Oh, good lord, it’s just Anne Marie.
I open the door. “Hi,” I say, and pull her inside before slamming the door and locking it again.
“What in the Sam Hill’s goin’ on in here?” she asks while I run to lock the back door. She follows me into the kitchen and stares at me standing there with that big ol’ knife.
I glance down at it, stagger over to the counter, and throw it in a drawer.
I open the broom closet. “It’s okay,” I assure the girls. I tell ’em to go wash their hands and play in the nursery for a while. For the first time I can remember, Abigail does what I say without argument, and Patty does the same.
“We had an unexpected guest,” I explain to Anne Marie.
“Was it the wolf man?”
I hold my palm up to Anne so she’ll give me a minute. I know I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t—I’m too young, and it don’t belong to me—but I open the liquor cabinet and pour myself a whiskey neat. I offer her the bottle, but she shakes her head in thinly veiled revulsion. I sip it as we sit in silence for a few moments. Eventually, Anne Marie busts out laughing.
“What? It ain’t funny!”
“I’m sure it ain’t. And I wanna hear the details and I promise I’ll stop laughin’, but I have to tell you—” She comes over to me and gives me a big, goofy kiss on the forehead. “It is so nice to see you lookin’ like an unholy mess for once in your life!”
6
Stars
I LEAN BACK IN THE tub and close my eyes, so glad this day is done and not ready to think about tomorrow yet. Me and Anne Marie had a long talk after I told her about losin’ the girls and the strange man in the house givin’ out ice cream. I don’t know if she got everything off her chest that she wanted to, but she said a lot. She was beatin’ herself up a bit for feelin’ jealous of me sometimes. Both because she loves me and because it’s one of the seven deadly sins. I told her envy was a deadly sin, not jealousy, and they’re two different things. I learned that from somewhere. She wanted to know the difference, and I couldn’t quite remember, but it’s somethin’ like wantin’ something somebody has versus already havin’ something and bein’ scared to lose it. She looked more confused after I explained it, so I told her to forget about it. I just asked her to quit bein’ hard on herself. We can’t help how we feel.
She also said some stuff I didn’t really feel like hearin’.
It’s no big secret that Clay’s been with girls. A lotta girls. Unfortunately, Anne seemed to know many more details than I did, and she decided to share them.
“Ya know that girl Prissy? Gap toothed, long wavy hair?”
“Her too?”
Anne Marie nodded solemnly.
“And, I wasn’t gonna tell you this, but I think you deserve to know,” she dramatically began. “Remember Deacon Samuel? His wife Ida and their four kids?”
“What about ’em?”
Anne Marie gave me a knowing look.
“Wait a minute. Ida? Mrs. Samuel?”
Anne Marie raised her hands in that don’t kill the messenger way.
“I don’t know if I believe that one. I mean, ain’t she like thirty-five? That don’t make sense to me.”
“Evvie? Why do you think they moved?”
I stayed quiet. I didn’t know why they moved, and I’d never given it any thought before.
Anne Marie didn’t have much else to say after that. She didn’t have to; she’d made her point. I guess she’s just worried about me. I heard some
